Devarim (5764)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help. Mida Tova — Sabbath eve, Torah portion Devarim, 5765

Questions

1. What does one do when the inferred case and the source case each have opposing stringencies?
2. What characterizes the situations in which stringencies are offset?
3. A legal implication of aggadic midrash (non-legal rabbinic exposition): is the prohibition against fighting Moab permanent?
4. Is the permission to convert Moabite women permanent?
5. When is a person judged by his present deeds, and when by the future?
6. What is the mode of divine governance called Nora Alilah: on genuine and illusory choice.

The hermeneutical principle: kal va-homer (an a fortiori inference)

And the Lord said to me: Do not distress Moab, and do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land as a possession; for I have given Ar as a possession to the descendants of Lot.

— Deuteronomy 2:9

… He said to him: It is written, “And the Lord said to me: Do not distress Moab, and do not provoke them to war.” Could it have entered Moses’ mind to wage war without permission? Rather, Moses reasoned by a kal va-homer on his own. He said: If concerning Midian, who came only to assist Moab, the Torah said, “Harass the Midianites and strike them,” then Moab themselves all the more so. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: What arose in your mind did not arise in Mine. I have two precious descendants to bring forth from them: Ruth the Moabite and Naamah the Ammonite.

— Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 38a

Another interpretation: “Avenge the vengeance” means one vengeance against Midian and one against Moab. But was not Moab first in devising evil against Israel, as it says, “And Moab said to the elders of Midian”? Why then were the Midianites singled out from Moab, such that it says, “Avenge the vengeance of the children of Israel on the Midianites,” whereas regarding Moab it is written, “Do not distress Moab”? Rather, because David was destined to come forth from them. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to them: Wait with them; I have a precious find among them. I will take it from them, and afterward exact vengeance from them. And so we find that once David came, the Holy One delivered them into his hand, as it says, “He struck Moab and measured them with a line, making them lie down on the ground.” But Midian were delivered into the hand of Israel, as it says, “They arrayed themselves against Midian.” And Moab’s counsel was only against Israel for killing, as it says, “Perhaps I shall be able to strike them,” but Midian’s counsel was only to cause Israel to sin. Through them twenty-four thousand Israelites fell, and through them Israel became liable to annihilation, for one who causes a person to sin is worse than one who kills him. Moreover, the Holy One wrote concerning them, “No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter.” Why are the males forbidden and the females permitted? Because Ruth was destined to come forth from them.

— Yalkut Shimoni, Mattot, sec. 785

A. Offsetting opposing stringencies in a kal va-homer

Introduction

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses describes the course of Israel’s history since the Exodus from Egypt. In that context he mentions God’s command not to provoke Ammon and Moab to war.

The sages, in the discussion in Bava Kamma cited above, ask why any command not to go to war was needed at all. Seemingly, a command is required specifically to go to war, and no such command had been given. Therefore the Talmudic discussion asks: how could it even have occurred to Moses to provoke war without permission from God? The answer offered there is the kal va-homer from Midian to Moab.

Objections to the kal va-homer

At first glance, the kal va-homer itself is problematic. Why should Moab be more deserving of war than Midian? It can be shown from several angles that the punishment due to Midian is specifically more severe than that due to Moab.

Indeed, the very fact that Midian came to Moab’s aid seems, at first sight, to constitute a graver accusation against them. Moab feared the Israelites who would pass through their land—at least that they might seize spoil from them by force, as explained in the Talmudic discussion cited above and in Rashi, to be cited immediately—and therefore invited Balaam to curse them. Midian, however, although they had no interest of their own and no independent cause for fear, intervened and caused Israel to stumble. This is stated explicitly in Rashi on Numbers 31:2:

“Avenge the vengeance of the children of Israel on the Midianites” — and not on the Moabites, because the Moabites entered the matter out of fear, since they were afraid of them, lest they plunder them, for it said only, “Do not provoke them to war.” But the Midianites embroiled themselves in a quarrel not their own. Another interpretation: because I have two precious descendants to bring forth from them: “Ruth the Moabite and Naamah the Ammonite.”

Rashi presents these as two differing opinions. However, according to the first opinion, the kal va-homer seems refuted, and it is not clear how the second opinion deals with this argument. In Sifrei there too a similar claim appears, though its intent is not entirely clear:

“On the Midianites” — but were not the Moabites first in the matter? Rather, they made peace with Midian in order to wage war against Israel. Why then does it say “Midianites”? Because they were contending with Israel.

It appears from this midrash that in fact we ought to take vengeance on both Moab and Midian alike. The vengeance is named after Midian only because of a play on words between “Midianites” and “contentions”; see also Torah Temimah there.

There is yet another distinction that tilts the matter toward greater stringency in the case of Midian than Moab. Moab merely tried to recruit a prophet who would curse Israel. The harm to Israel was supposed to come, if at all, from above, as a result of the curse. Midian, however, caused them to stumble directly and physically through sexual immorality. Perhaps one could even say here that one cannot appoint an agent for a sin: Moab sent Midian against Israel, but those who actually harmed them were the Midianites.

More than that: in the Yalkut cited above we see that one who causes others to sin is worse than one who kills them. From that perspective too, the judgment of Midian, who sought to make Israel sin, is more severe than that of Moab, who sought to kill them.

The Torah’s own position

On the other hand, despite all these objections, the Torah itself indeed seems to regard Moab’s sin as more severe, and therefore Moses’ kal va-homer in the midrash appears justified. The Torah commands us:

No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord; even to the tenth generation none belonging to them shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever; because they did not meet you with bread and water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor of Aram-Naharaim to curse you.

— Deuteronomy 23:4–5

In the Yalkut cited above it is explained that the permission for women to enter the assembly of the Lord was intended only to allow the birth of King David. Fundamentally, we should not have accepted converts from them, including female converts.¹ By contrast, we do not find in the Torah any parallel command concerning Midian. It is true that Scripture commands:

Harass the Midianites and strike them, for they harass you with their schemes by which they deceived you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, who was slain on the day of the plague because of the matter of Peor.

— Numbers 25:17–18

However, this was a command to Moses and his generation; see also Numbers 31:2. In Jewish law there is no rule for all generations that converts from Midian may not be accepted. This implies that the Torah sees the sin of the Moabites as more severe than that of the Midianites.

Summary: the two opinions regarding the severity of the sins of Moab and Midian

We have seen that there are two rabbinic opinions concerning the relation between the sins of Moab and Midian. Our midrash assumes that Moab’s sin is more severe. The midrash cited in Rashi above assumes that Midian’s sin is more severe, and Sifrei seems to imply that the two are equal. We saw that the Torah itself suggests that Moab’s sin is more severe, since it forbids us to accept them as converts. By contrast, several considerations we raised point in the opposite direction, namely that Midian’s sin is the more severe.

We must therefore explain the reasoning of the authors of our midrash: how can one understand the view that Moab’s sin is more severe? Conversely, we must understand how those who hold the second view would interpret the Torah’s prohibition on accepting converts from Moab, and especially the fact that no such rule exists regarding Midian.

The first view: the severity of Midian’s sin

Those who hold that Midian’s sin is the graver one would presumably explain that the prohibition on accepting converts is not a punishment for Moab, but derives from side considerations. Perhaps Moab are less fit than Midian to be included within the people of Israel, and the like.² Moses’ consideration regarding the duty to initiate war as vengeance, by contrast, evaluates the matter in terms of the gravity of the deed: who is more deserving of punishment. From that perspective, Midian’s sin is precisely the graver one and they are more deserving of punishment. Therefore, according to this view, one cannot derive by kal va-homer from the command to wage war against Midian that there is also a duty to wage war against Moab.

This point is connected to something we have already noted several times: the relevance of the aspects of stringency. When we make a kal va-homer, we must assume that the parameter in which A is more stringent than B is indeed a parameter of stringency and that it is relevant to the question before us—here, the initiation of war—and not that it results from some specific side cause.

Explaining the view of our midrash: the severity of Moab’s sin

When we examine the various dimensions of stringency in the sin of the Moabites, we can suggest at least two aspects here:³

1. From the language of the midrash it emerges that the reason we are to see Moab’s sin as more severe is that they were the initiators. Midian and Balaam merely attached themselves to them.
2. Alternatively, one can put it this way: the outcome would not have occurred without Moab, since they were the interested party. Midian, by contrast, were only agents. In principle, Moab could have found other substitutes to carry it out.

For these two reasons, the author of our midrash held that Moab’s sin was more severe. It would seem that he would dismiss the opposing considerations as less significant.

A fundamental difficulty: can one ignore opposing considerations?

As is well known, to refute a kal va-homer it is enough to point to any opposing consideration. When we find a stringency in the source case as against the inferred case, the kal va-homer is refuted and rejected. In such a situation there are advantages of stringency on both sides: one served as the basis from which we wished to construct the kal va-homer, and the other is the contrary stringency raised in the refutation. These are two different scales of stringency.

As noted, in such a case one cannot make a kal va-homer, since each of the stringencies would serve as a refutation of an inference built on the other scale. When there are two scales of stringency, one cannot establish a clear directional relation of more stringent and more lenient between the two contexts. One may say it differently: the scale relevant to the question that interests us—whether to initiate war—may be either of the two, and therefore we have no way of knowing whether the kal va-homer is valid.

It would therefore seem that those who defend the validity of the kal va-homer must reject the opposing considerations entirely, for otherwise the inference is refuted. But on its face these considerations are very plausible, and it is hard to assume that they carry no weight at all. Yet even the slightest weight is enough to refute a kal va-homer.

The mechanism of subsuming a refutation

A mechanism appears in the medieval commentators according to which objections based on reasoning can be subsumed within the kal va-homer itself. Tosafot, s.v. “ani,” on Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 25a—and in fuller detail Nimukei Yosef on the Rif there—discuss a kal va-homer from tooth and foot in the public domain, which are exempt from payment, to horn, which is liable for half-damages. They ask why the Talmud does not refute the kal va-homer by pointing to a stringency found in tooth and foot but not in horn: namely, that their damage is common, and therefore there is more reason to impose liability on tooth and foot, as explained in several places at the beginning of Bava Kamma.

Tosafot explain that this objection is ineffective, and in fact it even strengthens the kal va-homer. The inference may be formulated as follows: if tooth and foot, despite the fact that their damage is common, are nevertheless not liable in the public domain, and yet are liable in the damaged party’s property, then horn, which is liable in the public domain even though its damage is not common, certainly ought to be liable in the damaged party’s property. The very consideration that seems to refute the kal va-homer in fact strengthens it. At first glance the same should apply here. The objections we raised are considerations of reasoning, and therefore they should be subsumed into the kal va-homer rather than refute it.

However, in our case that is not correct. Moses performs a kal va-homer that is itself based on reasoning. This is not a formal hermeneutical kal va-homer based on three given laws, as in the case of tooth and foot and horn, where one can subsume an opposing rational objection. We are dealing here with a kal va-homer based on the reasoning that Midian came only to assist Moab. Against that very reasoning stands an opposing consideration, namely that Midian acted without any motive of their own. In such a kal va-homer, that consideration cannot simply be subsumed.

Had Moses made a kal va-homer from the fact that the Torah forbids us to accept converts from Moab, that would indeed have been a legal kal va-homer, and then one could subsume the contrary reasoning and say the following: if Midian, who embroiled themselves in a quarrel not their own, and yet the Torah does not forbid us to accept converts from them, then Moab, whose war against Israel had at least some reason behind it, and yet the Torah does forbid us to accept converts from them, certainly ought to be subject to war. But, as noted, that was not Moses’ kal va-homer. He made a kal va-homer from reasoning, and therefore the mechanism of subsuming is not relevant.

Offsetting stringencies in a kal va-homer

It is possible that in certain situations one may make a kal va-homer even when there are two opposing stringencies pointing in opposite directions. In the Talmud we find an exceptional case in which there are opposing stringencies on both sides, and nevertheless we weigh the two competing advantages and perform a kal va-homer on the basis of the net balance of stringency between them.

The discussion in Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 41b, and parallels, deals with the law of misappropriation: is it identical in the case of a paid bailee and an unpaid bailee, or not? In that context the following is said:

Rabbi Yohanan said in the name of Rabbi Yosei ben Nehorai: The law of misappropriation stated with regard to a paid bailee differs from the law of misappropriation stated with regard to an unpaid bailee. But I say: it does not differ. What is meant by “it differs”? You might say that the law of misappropriation need not have been written with regard to a paid bailee, since it could have been derived from an unpaid bailee: if an unpaid bailee, who is exempt for theft and loss, is nevertheless liable if he misappropriates it, then a paid bailee, who is liable for theft and loss, all the more so. For what legal purpose, then, did the Merciful One write both? To teach you that liability for misappropriation does not require a diminution. But I say: it does not differ, in accordance with Rabbi Elazar, who said that this one and that one are the same. What is meant by “this one and that one are the same”? Because one can refute the inference: what is distinctive about an unpaid bailee? It is that he pays double payment when he falsely claims theft. And the one who does not refute holds that payment of the principal without an oath is more severe than double payment with an oath.

— Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 41b

On the one hand, the paid bailee is liable for theft and loss, whereas the unpaid bailee is exempt. On the other hand, the unpaid bailee is liable for double payment when he claims that the deposit was stolen from him, swears to that effect, and it later turns out that he lied; the paid bailee, in the same situation, pays only the principal.

In this discussion we find two opinions as to how to treat such a situation. Rabbi Elazar holds that the unpaid bailee and the paid bailee are on the same level of stringency, because each has a stringency relative to the other. Rabbi Yohanan, by contrast, holds that one can indeed derive a kal va-homer from the unpaid bailee to the paid bailee, because all things considered the paid bailee is more stringent: liability for principal in cases of theft and loss even without an oath outweighs the leniency in the case of a false claim of theft under oath, where he pays only the principal. In mathematical language, one might call this the difference in “absolute value.”³ This is an offsetting of two opposing stringencies, and a kal va-homer is performed on the basis of the net result.

This is a dispute similar to the one we found between the two midrashim cited above. The midrash that holds that Moses made a kal va-homer apparently holds that opposing stringencies can be offset, and thus the refutation arising from the contrary reasoning can be set aside. In the Sifrei we cited, it appears that the sins of Moab and Midian are equal, and that closely resembles Rabbi Elazar’s position here. The two stringencies in opposite directions equalize the status of the source case and the inferred case.

Generalizing the structure described above

It is important to note that this structure is typical of disputes concerning a kal va-homer. Whenever there is a dispute in which one side makes a kal va-homer and the other side rejects it by means of a refutation, we must ask what the first side does with the refutation raised by the second. Sometimes the sides disagree about the relevance of the refutation, and one side does not acknowledge it at all. But when the refutation rests on plain reasoning rather than on some formal law, it is highly likely that neither side can dismiss it entirely, and it would therefore seem that all should agree that the kal va-homer has been rejected.

Viewed more broadly, it seems that such cases—disputes over a rational refutation of a kal va-homer—are indeed rare. Usually, when an opposing rational consideration arises, the kal va-homer is rejected. But as we saw above, the kal va-homer in our midrash from Midian to Moab is itself disputed. We also saw that the refutation is based on simple considerations, such as “embroiling oneself in a quarrel not one’s own.” In such a case, the only way to understand the opinion that supports the kal va-homer is by relying on the technique of offsetting stringencies.

In order to examine this possibility, we must investigate what is special about the case in Bava Metzia. Why is there room there to weigh and offset one stringency against another and still perform a kal va-homer, rather than treating each stringency as a refutation of an inference built on the other? After that, we must ask ourselves whether the case of our midrash also belongs to this type.

When do we offset stringencies?

At first glance, it seems that there is indeed room to distinguish the discussion in Bava Metzia from ordinary cases. The two opposing stringencies in the unpaid and paid bailees are connected to one another; they express the same scale. The reason a paid bailee pays only the principal in the case of a false claim of theft is precisely the rule that he is liable for theft and loss. Because of that rule, even if he claims that the deposit was stolen, he is still liable to pay. A claim of theft does not exempt him. Precisely because of this, even if it turns out that he lied, there was no attempt here to “steal” by means of that falsehood, and therefore he is exempt from double payment. In the unpaid bailee the situation is the reverse: precisely because he is exempt in cases of theft, when he falsely claims theft he is trying to free himself from payment, and thereby to “steal” the object. Consequently, if it turns out that he lied, he pays double.

It therefore seems that the offsetting of the opposing stringencies in the comparison between the unpaid bailee and the paid bailee stems from the fact that we are dealing with a single trait that branches in two opposite directions—two features belonging to the same scale: one in the direction of leniency and the other in the direction of stringency. We must therefore decide whether, net of both sides, the trait on that scale is ultimately more lenient or more stringent. The fact that the paid bailee’s obligations are greater because he is paid for guarding causes both that he is liable for theft—the stringency—and that in the case of a false claim of theft he pays only the principal—the leniency. The dispute in the Talmud is about which side outweighs the other.⁴ Only in such a case do we offset opposing stringencies.

Applying this to our midrash

Let us now return to our midrash. We saw that according to the midrash that views the sin of the Moabites as more severe, the stringency of their sin lies in the fact that they were the initiators of the action against Israel. By contrast, according to the midrash cited in Rashi, the stringency of Midian’s sin lies in the fact that they “embroiled themselves in a quarrel not their own.” Here too, these are two sides of the same scale. Moab initiated the approach to Midian, and the Midianites responded. This relationship has two implications: on the one hand, the Moabites are more guilty because they initiated; on the other hand, the Moabites had a direct motive, whereas the Midianites acted without any reason of their own. These are two sides of the same coin, just as in the discussion of bailees.

If so, in our midrash too there is room for an offsetting of opposing stringencies. The disagreement between the authors of the differing midrashim is over the question whether the initiator is more guilty than the one who joins in or not.

A legal implication

One can find a legal implication of this dispute. According to our midrash, Moab’s sin is the more severe one, and therefore, fundamentally, we should have gone to war against them by kal va-homer from Midian. It follows that the command not to provoke them to war was intended solely to allow the birth of King David. Once David had already been born, that command lapsed, and the legitimacy of war against them returned. By contrast, according to the midrash that sees Moab’s sin as the lesser one, the prohibition against provoking them to war presumably stems from another reason—that they do not deserve destruction, unlike Midian, whose sin is more severe. In that case, it would seem that the prohibition against provoking them is permanent.

Indeed, Tosafot, s.v. “nasa Moshe,” on Bava Kamma 38a ask from the case of Joab, who was sent to Aram-Naharaim, attacked the Moabites, and sought to destroy them, while they invoked against him the verse “Do not distress Moab.” David answered them that they had breached the fence first by inviting Balaam. Tosafot note that from here it would seem that the prohibition against provoking them to war had already been lifted from the time of Balaam. Tosafot answer that David’s words were only a mere rhetorical deflection. However, the author of Torah Temimah, on Numbers 31:2, resolves the issue precisely through the claim that the prohibition remained in force until David was born, and therefore David answers them that now it is permitted.⁵ And indeed this is what we find in the Yalkut cited above, which writes that the prohibition against provoking Moab stems from the fact that King David was destined to come from them, and concludes: “I have a precious find among them; I will take it from them, and afterward exact vengeance from them.”

It is interesting to note that Maimonides, in the third root of Sefer ha-Mitzvot, takes it for granted that this is a commandment meant only for the moment, and asks, on that basis, against Halakhot Gedolot—which, according to Maimonides, counted several commandments that were not meant for all generations—why it did not count this one as well. Nahmanides, by contrast, at the end of his Additions to the Negative Commandments, discusses this at great length and concludes that it is a permanent commandment; see Megillat Esther there, who disagrees.⁶

Two concluding remarks

1. We should ask whether all this turns our midrash into a legal midrash. At first glance, this kal va-homer belongs to aggadah—that is, to the clarification of historical reality—rather than to law. On the other hand, as we have seen, it does have legal implications.
2. We have not found a parallel consideration with respect to the permission to convert Moabite and Ammonite women, which also seems to exist only in order to allow the birth of David. In that context, however, we do not find any challenge to the fact that the permission remains in force even after David’s birth. Indeed, this is almost explicit in Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 76b, and it requires further study.

B. “Judged by his end”

Introduction

The midrash we have been discussing raises several additional questions. In this section we will address one of them briefly: decisions that the Holy One, blessed be He, makes on the basis of events that are supposed to occur in the future.

This issue requires clarification from several different angles:⁸

1. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, spare Ammon and Moab because of those who are destined to emerge from them? If they had been destroyed, no one would have emerged from them, and thus no such merit would ever have come into being to save them.
2. Could the Holy One, blessed be He, not have arranged for Ruth and Naamah to emerge from another people? Why was it necessary to ensure that they emerged specifically from Ammon and Moab?
3. In the section of the stubborn and rebellious son, the sages tell us that this is an exceptional case in which we are commanded to judge a person “by his end.”⁷ By contrast, from Ishmael we learn the rule that every person is judged “where he is,” that is, according to his deeds at that very moment. If so, why are Ammon and Moab granted special treatment on account of the two women who are destined to emerge from them?⁸

We will begin with an example from Rashi on Exodus, which may clarify a basic point relevant to these questions.

“And he turned this way and that and saw that there was no man”

The words of the sages cited by Rashi on Exodus 2:12, regarding the Egyptian who struck a Hebrew man, are well known. Moses looked this way and that and saw that there was no man, and then decided to kill the Egyptian. Rashi explains there:

“And he saw that there was no man” — he saw that no one would come forth from him who would convert.

Similarly, in Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 46b, regarding Elisha and the children who mocked him, we find:

“‘And he turned behind him, saw them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord’—what did he see? … Rabbi Yohanan said: He saw that there was no trace of commandment-observance in them. But perhaps there would be in their descendants? Rabbi Elazar said: Not in them and not in their descendants, to the end of all generations.”

These passages are very puzzling. At first glance, Moses and Elisha are looking into the future and making decisions on that basis. But that is not the correct picture. When they decide, in the end, to kill the Egyptian or the children, they thereby determine the future with their own hands. Clearly, no one will emerge from them who will convert or perform commandments, because no one at all is going to emerge from them: they are about to die. If so, Moses and Elisha are not foreseeing the future; rather, they are determining it through their actions.

In any event, what is the meaning of the judgment rendered by these two prophets? It appears that Moses and Elisha are looking at the present, not at the future. They are judging a certain theoretical future that, in the end, is never realized: if they were to leave these people alive, what—or who—might emerge from them?

If so, these two cases do not constitute an exception to the rule that one does not judge according to the future. The “future” under discussion here is only a certain way of examining the present. The implicit assumption is that every good future result has some positive root in the present from which it grows.

Returning to Ammon and Moab

We asked how such a merit could apply to Moab. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had allowed Moab to be destroyed, then the precious descendant—Ruth—would never have emerged from them, and there would have been no need to spare them for her sake. The plain sense of the midrash, however, is not that the Holy One has compassion on them for Ruth’s sake, but simply that He decides to leave them alive so that Ruth can emerge from them. We then asked why the Holy One could not have brought Ruth and David forth from some other nation that did not deserve to die.

It would seem that the Holy One knows that there is something in Moab from which alone King David can emerge. They possess some positive quality by virtue of which they merited a descendant such as David. If so, perhaps even now the Holy One does not exempt them on the basis of the future, but because of that very quality—and it is from that quality that the future, too, will be determined. If so, the prohibition against provoking them may indeed derive from some merit already present within them.

With respect to the third question, we may answer in the same way. Ammon and Moab are not judged by their end, but on the basis of their present state. If, in their present state, it appears that someone may emerge from them whose birth it is important to preserve, then they are preserved for that person’s sake. They are not judged by the future but by the present.

God’s knowledge of the future

Here we arrive at a question that touches closely on the preceding ones. The assumption underlying all these midrashim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the future that will occur, and the only remaining question is whether He makes decisions and gives instructions now on the basis of that future.

But even the question of divine foreknowledge is not so simple and clear. It is well known that Maimonides asks, in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 5:5, how a person can have free choice if the Holy One, blessed be He, already knows in advance what he will choose. We will suggest one possible position on this question and consider its implications for our discussion.

The problem raised by Maimonides has three components: divine foreknowledge, human freedom of choice, and temporal order—the knowledge precedes the act of choice. If the order were reversed, no problem would arise. Accordingly, five principal approaches are possible:

1. To relinquish the postulate that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows the future.
2. To relinquish the postulate of free choice.
3. To change something about the time axis—the Holy One is above time, and the like.
4. To claim that there is no contradiction, as in the knowledge of astrologers, as in the gloss of the Ra’avad there.
5. To live with the contradiction.

The Shelah, in the introduction to his book Shenei Luhot ha-Berit, in the section called Beit ha-Behirah, chooses the first option. According to his view, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know in advance the future that will occur. He explains that the prophecies given to the prophets, too, are only by way of possibility: they describe only what may occur according to the ordinary laws. But there is always the possibility of human choice, which can change this.

Here we see an approach according to which even for the Holy One there is no knowledge of the future that will occur. Obviously, the intention is only with regard to human acts that depend on free choice. All the rest of existence, insofar as it is not tied to human action, proceeds according to fixed laws, and with respect to that realm the Holy One knows everything that will occur.⁹

The midrashim we have cited raise a serious problem for such an approach. As we noted, they all assume that information about the future is already in God’s possession at the present moment, and the entire discussion concerns only whether that information is already used now.

The governance of Nora Alilah

The twentieth-century kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Elyashiv, in his book Leshem Shevo ve-Ahlamah, explains that there are cases in which the Holy One, blessed be He, conducts Himself in a mode that he calls Nora Alilah.¹⁰

The source is in Midrash Tanhuma, Vayeshev 4, s.v. “Ve-Yosef Hurad”:

… “Come and see the works of God, awesome in plot against human beings.” Rabbi Joshua ben Korha said: Even the terrible things that You bring upon us, You bring by way of a pretext. Come and see: when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, on the very first day He created the angel of death. From where? Rabbi Berekhiah said: because it is said, “And darkness was upon the face of the deep”—this is the angel of death, who darkens the faces of creatures. Adam was created on the sixth day, and the pretext was hung upon him, as though he had brought death into the world, as it is said, “For on the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” To what may this be compared? To a man who sought to divorce his wife. Before going home, he wrote the bill of divorce. He entered his house with the bill in his hand and looked for a pretext to give it to her. He said to her: Mix me a cup to drink. She mixed it for him. As soon as he took the cup from her hand, he said to her: Here is your bill of divorce. She said to him: What is my offense? He said to her: Leave my house, because you mixed me a lukewarm cup. She said to him: You already knew that I was going to mix you a lukewarm cup, for you had written the bill and brought it with you in your hand. So too Adam said before the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, before You created Your world—two thousand years earlier—the Torah was with You as a confidante, as it is written, “Then I was beside Him as a confidante, and I was daily His delight.” And it is written in it: “This is the law: when a man dies in a tent.” Had You not already arranged death for human beings, would You have written thus in it? Rather, You came to hang the pretext upon me. Thus: “awesome in plot against human beings.”

There are situations in which the Holy One, blessed be He, acts as though a certain outcome came from human beings, whereas in fact the matter was planned in advance and the game is already rigged from the outset. It seems that the cases we have discussed here—where the Holy One makes decisions in the present in light of future events—all belong to this mode of Nora Alilah. These are cases in which the choice in human hands is only apparent, while in reality the Holy One Himself determines everything.

Returning to our proposal from section A

This strengthens our earlier proposal, according to which the Holy One judged Moab and Ammon by their present state and not by the future. That “future” is already fixed from now, and there is no significance to the fact that it has not yet been actualized. Consequently, this is judgment on the basis of the present, not on the basis of the future. The future is only the realization of what already exists in the present.

Footnotes